The Beginning Of The End Of The Thousand-Year Reich

Rating: 10/10 (26 September 2003)

No one will tune into this, one of the greatest and most epic war films ever conceived, for plot surprises, given the fact that it details an event whose outcome is of course already known. The point of the film is to detail what actually happened on the day that began the eventual downfall of the Thousand-Year Reich, and it does so with a rare combination of painstaking historical accuracy and Hollywood star power.
The historical documentary aspect of the film is best shown in the German scenes, given the general lack of familiarity of the German performers and their characters on the part of the audience. Most will probably recognize Erwin Rommel and some may recognize Karl Gerd Von Runstedt, but it is doubtful most will know who Werner Pluskat or Josef "Pips" Priller or Gunther Blumentritt were (though James Bond fans will recognize Curt Jurgens, here playing Blumentritt). Given this general lack of audience familiarity, the German scenes move along like a documentary.
It is in the American and some of the British scenes that the Hollywood star power of the film comes into play. Darryl F. Zanuck assembled the most ambitious cast in memory and all the major stars get quality screen time, from John Wayne and Robert Mitchum on down. Roddy McDowell is best known for the mild British accent he imbued to so many of his roles, so much so that it takes a few viewings to recognize him as an American grunt. Richard Burton has only two scenes in the film, but he makes the most of them and has the strongest dialogue, notably in his conversation with an 82nd Airborne paratrooper - "He's dead, I'm crippled, you're lost, I supposed that's what war is" is one of the best lines in any film ever.
Sean Connery would soon become famous as James Bond, and here he eats up the scenery with Norman Rossington as they land on the beaches, Connery chewing out the fact that an officer rallies the troops to remember Dunkirk even though he was not in the service at the time, and Rossington commenting on some of the absurdities involved in this battle - "I tell you, there are some very peculiar blokes on this beach."
The one scene I had a problem with is the assault on Pointe Du Hoc - the film notes that German guns that have been firing on the other beaches have been moved, and makes it out like the Army Rangers assaulted the hill for nothing; in actuality the Rangers tracked down the guns initially deployed at Pointe Du Hoc and destroyed them as they tried to besiege Allied Forces further inland.
My favorite scenes are the travails of the 82nd Airborne batallion led by John Wayne's Colonel Benjamin Vandervoort, and the squabbles between Luftwaffe commandant Wolfgang Hager and hotheaded ace Colonel Josef "Pips" Priller. Hager and Priller haggle it out on the telephone constantly, leading Hager's XO to ask why Priller was never court-martialled. Meanwhile, Vandervoort leads the drive to St. Mere-Eglise, despite breaking his foot in the swamp area the Germans have flooded five miles away - when he and the batallion discover they're going in the wrong direction because a directional sign was turned around, Vandervoort growls, "Does anyone in this outfit read a compass besides me?"
The 82nd also figures in the film's signature horror - the slaughter of a batallion, here including comedian Red Buttons, who is brilliant as the 82nd private who is concerned with speaking French but who can only watch helplessly as his pals land in the middle of the town and are wiped out by the waiting Germans, amid the din of church bells.
Without question this film ranks as among the very best war epics ever put to film. Whether shown in its original B&W format or colorized (unlike many other colorized films this one loses nothing in the switch from B&W) it tells a chilling historical story to near-perfection.